Photo Exhibition

The Hemispheric Institute on the Americas is showcasing Professor Natalia Deeb-Sossa’s collection of photographs “Reproductive Oppression.” The collection complements her research which focuses on the multiple difficulties Latinas in North Carolina have in gaining access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH).

While celebrating life through the pictures of children and multigenerational families, Natalia’s work challenges the perception that there is a cultural preference among Latinas to maintain pregnancies. She also documents the obstacles placed by the North Carolina health and legal system and the concomitant use of homemade remedies and clandestine abortions. Teenage mothers and older women were told that not getting pregnant (like motherhood) is a woman’s obligation and responsibility.

Erna Martinez is also showcasing an altarpiece.

The photographs and altarpiece are on display in the Social Science and Humanities Building, on the 5th floor (above the office of the Dean of Letters and Sciences) for the Winter and Spring quarter 2008.

The Hemispheric Institute on the Americas is an interdisciplinary group bringing together faculty and graduate students that focus on the study of transnational processes in the American Hemisphere.

Our Goal includes promoting research to challenge the boundaries of disciplinary specialization and culture area studies, exploring the connections throughout the social, cultural, and economic landscape of the Western Hemisphere from an array of perspective and redirecting and redefining the study of Latin America from a broadly hemispheric viewpoint.